St. Ansanus

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Restorers decided (in an intervention that was called recent in a 2008 publication) to remove three layers of polychromy from this sculpture, taking it down to the bare wood, "given the impossibility of recuperating the original polychromy." The carving is not finely finished, because the sculptor, after finishing his part of the process, sent the work to a painter, who added gesso and then paint to the entire surface, animating the statue, and making such details as the blank eyes come to life. This sculpture, now housed in the Museo di Villa Guinigi in Lucca, comes from Santi Simone e Guida in Lucca. It was early on attributed to Francesco di Valdambrino, but now scholars agree that it is a work of Jacopo della Quercia (partially because of the contrast with Francesco di Valdambrino's sculpture of Sant'Ansano in Santi Paolino e Donato in Lucca). Photograph(s) licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.